


The Sun Shines Today Also

by StormLeviosa



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alfred Pennyworth is a Saint, Animal Lover Damian Wayne, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily (DCU) Fluff, Brotherly Bonding, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, COVID-19, Fluff and Angst, Gen, I wrote this instead of revising, Tim Drake's Missing Spleen, quarantine fic, so we protect him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24027697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: This has gone on forever and they barely remember a time before masks and hand sanitiser andplease stand two metres apartand they are all bored bored bored.The Bats, along with the rest of the world, are in lockdown. It's not all bad, but they do hate to be cooped up inside.
Comments: 15
Kudos: 221
Collections: Greatest Batfam Fics to Ever Exist





	The Sun Shines Today Also

**Author's Note:**

> I literally wrote the beginning of this while in a revision lecture (over zoom of course) for American Lit. The title is an Emerson quote. A real one, not one of the fake ones you find all over the internet.
> 
> Just a warning: there is a lot of discussion of coronavirus, protests, lockdown etc. and also a mention of suicide (but it's literally one sentence just skip over the first part of the paragraph after Damian finds the cats).

When everyone goes down to the cave, Tim climbs up to the roof. The sky is clearer than he’s ever seen it in Gotham: he can see the dimples on the moon and the constellations spread out across the sky like freckles. It is not normal to be able to see the stars, even this far out in Bristol instead of in the city proper. He can’t decide whether he likes it or hates it. It’s beautiful, certainly, but he hates what it means and he hates that all it reminds him of is the cold desert night after he blew up the Cradle. He draws his knees closer to his chest, tucks the blanket more securely around his shoulders, and sighs. He wishes he was out on patrol. It’s Bruce and Dick’s night tonight, with Alfred and Damian on comms. Tomorrow it’ll be Dick and Damian and yesterday it was Damian and Bruce and until this is over it won’t be anyone and Tim. He grates at the restriction even as he accepts its necessity. There are still people to save and crimes to stop and mysteries to solve and none of that will stop just because this virus is running rampant. Bruce assures him they have everything well in hand; Dick tells him that crime rates are pretty low anyway; Damian says they never needed him so why would he be necessary now? Alfred just tells him it’s okay to take a break. He doesn’t want a break. He wants this whole fiasco to be over.

Duke cuts down his daytime patrol to three times a week instead of every day. It’s important that people see them around, he knows. It’s comforting. But he has to toss that up with the risk to himself and the family every time he leaves. On the days he goes out, he wears a special mask like the ones he’s given when Scarecrow’s on the prowl and special gloves like the ones they use when handling Ivy’s concoctions. He comes back to the cave and goes through a complete disinfectant cycle, sending the suit for industrial cleaning, disposing of the mask and gloves, showering so thoroughly he wonders how he hasn’t scraped his skin off yet. His skin flakes and cracks and he knows the others suffer just the same but none of them complain. There are more lives than theirs on the line. When he’s finished, he pulls on another set of disposable masks and gloves and does his report on a sterile batcomputer before he strips them off and goes upstairs for dinner. Every time, he thanks Alfred for his cooking because life’s too short to not show appreciation for the little things. After dinner, he sits with the others in the living room and they watch reruns of old sitcoms or they stream yoga tutorials until everyone except Dick is rolling on the floor laughing at their own failure. When the others head down to the cave, he sits with Tim and tells him about how empty Gotham is, how utterly weird it is to go out crime fighting and instead help a confused old lady with her groceries or give a poor man terrified for his wife and twin baby boys a Wayne Enterprises business card or get someone’s cat out of a tree so they can go back home. He tells him how everyone he sees thanks him, not for helping them, but for putting his life in danger just by stepping out his door. They call him a hero for just daring to leave the house. It feels weird, he tells Tim, because this isn’t Gotham. Gotham is loud in everything it does: loud in war and loud in peace, in happiness and in mourning, in sickness and in health. The last time an apocalypse virus struck them, Gotham screamed. Now they barely whimper. 

There hasn’t been an Arkham breakout for weeks and Damian’s bored. Batman and Robin are useless against this kind of foe. There is nothing to fight here, no enemy to track down and stop, just a city gasping for air it cannot breathe. The hospitals are filled with the sick instead of the injured: no gunshot wounds or stabbings, just people drowning in their own breaths, no cancers from an accumulation of terrible things in the water, just people burning up in their own bodies and coughing up the lungs that failed them. He hates it. They are careful, so so careful, not to get any injuries because Leslie is rushed off her feet at the free clinic and they daren’t risk Alfred’s safety so callously. They stop a mugging. The man is only doing it because his wife is sick and he got laid off and lost his health insurance. He’s a criminal. They have a job to do: to stop him and his ilk. And yet, father doesn’t turn him over to the police. Father lets him go with a warning and a signed letter to claim money from Wayne Enterprises. They’ve been doing that a lot. Sometimes they see Gordon’s men patrolling the streets, masks on, watching for people being moronic. There is no one for them to confront. They trust Batman and Robin to do what’s right so they do little more than wave and shout encouragement from their posts on street corners or park gates. Father always makes sure to wave back. They never stop to talk to them. Batman and Robin are an example to others and if they don’t adhere to social distancing, if they don’t wear masks, if they don’t do everything they can to stop the spread, then who will? But Batman and Robin have to appear. They have to be out and about and  _ visible  _ and that is a contradiction of the rules the state of New Jersey put in place to protect them. And people are starting to notice.

The first protests are on Duke’s day off and he almost goes out to tell them off but Wayne stops him with a hand on his shoulder and a soft ‘you can’t control them.’ When they’re still there on Wednesday, he almost takes a detour on his patrol but remembers Wayne’s words and instead stops on an elementary schooler’s balcony and recites state capitals with them for half an hour until they get them all right. He goes by an old folk’s home and leaves a bunch of flowers on the window sill. He orders pizza for the nurses on the covid ward of Gotham General before he stops for lunch. Sitting on top of the city hall, he texts the group chat to let them know everything’s going okay because there’s no one on comms right now and gets a string of emojis from Cass (still sequestered in the Clocktower with Babs) and a fantastic pun from Steph (who’s willfully self-isolating so her mom can still go to work at the hospital). He finishes his patrol without any incidents and goes back to the manor hours before he normally does with the vague feeling that he should be doing more. On the way, he texts Alfred to see if he needs anything and waits in line at Target for what felt like hours but was actually only twenty minutes. He stands in the parking lot with a box of eggs and a carton of orange juice and wonders how the hell he’s meant to get home like this. One thing his utility belt does not have is a plastic bag. But Gotham is merciful and a guy in the queue takes pity on Duke and gives him a bag to loop over his arm while he grapples back to where he left his motorbike.

That night, all the news is talking about is the protests. They show off the best (and worst) of the placards, talk about why they’re protesting, what the consequences are, what the constitution says, what the mayor says. Mostly people just want to go back to work. They need the income; they need the routine. Some are out just for the sake of it, or so it seems. Tim spies a sign reading ‘The Bat’s still out and so am I’ and he wants to scream. He knows Bruce is taking every precaution, is helping in every way that is safe for him to do so, and he hates that this  _ idiot  _ is using that as an excuse to be selfish. The news isn’t helping. Tim can understand their desperation, their deep-rooted desire to be free to do as they please. Gotham is tenacious to its core, its people fighters of the toughest kind. They have survived worse than this. They have survived Joker gas and Scarecrow and the Riddler and Two-Face and Firefly and Killer Croc and Poison Ivy and all manner of random disasters that could only happen in Gotham. They survived the Clench. They survived an earthquake and its aftermath. Gotham can survive danger the way a cockroach survives a nuclear blast. But the truth is Gotham thrives on chaos, on unpredictability, and when they’re cooped up at home with the days blurring into one another with no end in sight they all start to go a little crazy. And crazy in Gotham mostly means angry.

Father helps a stranded college student carry home her bags of groceries and Damian tries not to scoff at the futility of it. They find a lone sit-down protester outside the mayor’s office and send him home. They sit by the batsignal and watch as the city settles down quieter than Damian’s ever seen it. He asks father what the point of this is. They haven’t stopped so much as a drug deal since they’ve been out tonight. Bruce tells him that this is true heroism: not beating up thugs in back alleys or stopping a bank robbery, but the little things to help little people. Walking home an elderly man is no less important than stopping the Penguin. Finding a lost dog so its owner can stop worrying is just as heroic as locking Condiment King away for the twelfth time in five months. And now especially, it’s the small things that are most important.  _ Everyone needs help sometimes _ , he tells Damian,  _ even you _ and Damian nods because he trusts father to tell him the truth. When they start the second half of their patrol, Damian spots a box of kittens abandoned by a dumpster. If rescuing a cat from a tree is just as heroic as stopping Condiment King, then rescuing kittens from certain death must be akin to stopping a world war. Father even lets him keep the kittens, at least until lockdown ends and the shelters are open. He tells Damian not to get attached to them but he’s already named the calico chewing on the edge of his cape Allegro.

The first time Dick talks down a jumper, he goes straight home and cries for an hour. It’s not, of course, the first time he’s dealt with jumpers or people who are suicidal, but it is the first time it really hits him how badly this whole situation is affecting people. He talks to Tim because he can always talk to Tim just like how Tim can always talk to him. He tells Tim about how useless he feels, like he isn’t doing enough, because sure they go out at night and help people as vigilantes but they get to go home to a  _ mansion  _ and anything they could ever dream of to do and they don’t have to worry about money or jobs and surely they could be doing  _ more _ ? Tim suggests that he does some kind of online video thing, gymnastics for kids or beginners martial arts or maths homework masterclasses, just for something to occupy him and the world. He thinks about it, remembers how much fun they’d had following along with the yoga video, and films the first in a series of introductory acrobatics and circus skills classes. He drags Damian into exactly once and vows never to again. The kid is terrible in front of a camera.

Tim has work to do. He’s taken over part of Bruce’s day job, trying to keep Wayne Enterprises afloat when the economy is crashing down down down and not stopping. Bruce’s money is probably the only thing keeping the city from collapsing and he keeps hiring more people so Tim keeps running the numbers except this time the numbers aren’t so good. He tells Bruce  _ no more  _ and sees his face turn dark. Tim goes back to the office, runs the numbers again, tries to think of a way to find the money for employees they can’t afford. If they lower the wages of the top-earners by ten percent, surely that's another couple hundred minimum-wage employees? If they cut the board’s income entirely, that’s another few hundred at least. If they cut the Research budget, that gives them a bit more to play with. If they cut and cut and cut… Tim takes the plans to Bruce. Bruce approves them. Bruce takes more business cards out on patrol that night and comes back empty handed. 

The lockdown continues. The numbers of new cases, of critical care cases, of deaths, keeps rising. Everyone is scared. Everyone is lonely. Everyone is bored half out of their minds despite having things to do. The protests continue until the protesters start getting sick. Then they all go home and stay there and the Bats try not to be relieved that they got sick because that’s a terrible thing to think. Tim begs to go out at night. Bruce says no. He begs Dick to take him out. Dick says no. He bribes Damian to not tell anyone he’s sneaking out. Damian is a little sneak and rats him out to Alfred. Tim tries to sneak out alone and doesn’t make it past the door. He tries to bargain for time on comms and fails. He gives up and goes for a run in the garden. It’s getting to the point where he’d do any errand, go anywhere, do anything, just to leave the grounds. Even Walmart would be an improvement on this endless monotony. He runs more. If he can’t go out as Red Robin, at least he can keep fit. 

They get phone calls from chat show hosts and boredom makes them accept them. They talk about quarantine, they talk about Damian’s cats, they talk about Dick’s now viral videos and their collective inability to bake. They rarely get serious but when they do, the others talk about how concerned they are for Alfred, who they cannot imagine life without, and Tim, who they adore even when he’s dumb, and Cass, who told them about the man who spat at her in the street because of the colour of her skin and the slant of her eyes. Mostly though, they play stupid games and tell silly stories that make people laugh. They accept every challenge the internet throws their way, from shaving their heads to the toilet paper challenge to Bruce donating a slightly obscene amount of money to a local food bank just because someone said they wouldn’t. People like to claim they have it easy, and maybe they do, but they are also the most well-loved of Gotham’s celebrities and know how to use it. So when Dick takes to walking on his hands balancing toilet paper rolls on his feet for a challenge, the others all join in.

Bruce cuts down their patrol days until most days he’s the only one out and even then only for a few hours. Crime’s low enough that they don’t need to be out. It’s a calculated risk and for once Bruce is  _ good  _ at maths. He doesn’t want anyone to put themselves or others needlessly at risk. The only exception is Duke, who makes his own schedule and is the most sensible of everyone. Damian chafes at the restriction, of course, but is pacified by time training in the cave - an allowance he uses as “proof” of his superiority to Tim, who has been begging for access for weeks. Dick accepts it as graciously as he can, though he hates Bruce trying to parent him now he’s an adult, and spends his time breaking up fights between Tim and Damian who suddenly have to spend even more time together than before. When they are all allowed out (because Bruce knows it isn’t fair to stop them going out entirely), they go in pairs and Bruce stays home. The nights Dick and Damian go out, he plays chess with Tim in his office and sometimes he even wins; or he watches Duke play pokemon and pretends to understand how the game works. When they come back, Bruce is always awake: a lifetime of late nights cannot be shaken so easily. He doesn’t ask for their reports. There’s no point anymore.

This has gone on forever and they barely remember a time before masks and hand sanitiser and  _ please stand two metres apart  _ and they are all bored bored bored. 

They all take a day off for the first time in a month and they help Alfred in the kitchen as much as he’ll allow them to and they binge watch every David Attenborough documentary on Netflix and when night falls, they Zoom call with Steph and Babs and Cass. They all seem to be holding up alright but it doesn’t stop the worry that they all feel for one another and the ache to be near. The laughter that bubbles up is tinged with sadness and their jokes are tainted with fear because even heroes are not immune to being human. Somewhere deep within they know it'll all be over one day and after they will play roof-top tag and train together and hug each other and Steph will eat her body weight in waffles on a dare and Cass will dance to the music from Alfred's old gramophone. After, they will be together and not separated by a computer screen. After, this whole terrible time will feel like nothing more than a bad dream.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent most of today hand-sewing a face mask even though our government hasn't told us to wear them yet because why not. I should be revising for my exams but I'm not. Deadlines don't feel real. This is what lockdown is doing to us 😂  
> Seriously, though, look after yourselves. Stay safe! Stay inside and follow your government guidelines. If you need someone to talk to, my inbox is always open so drop me a line (@storm-leviosa-fanfics on tumblr). This situation is tough for everyone but you don't have to suffer alone.


End file.
